Revolutionary cells (Germany)

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One of the logos used by the Revolutionary Cells

The Revolutionary Cells ( RZ ) were a left-wing extremist terror group in Germany. They were active from the 1970s to the 1990s and saw themselves as part of the autonomous movement. Two different currents emerged in the data centers: one part - similar to the Red Army Faction (RAF) - was anti-imperialist , while another part took a social revolutionary approach. There were violent disputes between the two wings, so that their greatest commonality, besides the name, was their decentralized form of organization. The Rote Zora was a women's group that organized itself in this context.

profile

Unlike the RAF, the RZ members did not want to operate from the underground, but rather live and work in accordance with legality. They remained anonymous during their attacks so that, in addition to their militant politics, they can continue to work in legal political organizations and participate in discussion processes within the left and society. In contrast to the RAF, the data centers were not tightly organized, instead they organized themselves in small cells without central management. Their decentralized form of organization was occasionally referred to as "Guerilla Diffusa". Due to this organizational structure, the data centers were sometimes referred to as after-work terrorists . However, their approach protected them from access by the state for a long time. Until 1999, according to statements from investigators, there were hardly any usable findings about the data center and only a few convictions.

“In contrast to the RAF, the aim of the RZ concept was that it was about carrying out actions that could be imitated and that could be measured. Anyone should be able to do what the RZ does as a group. They didn't want a patent on armed struggle, but they wanted to create a hierarchy of forms of action in which they represented the top of the method of intervention, so to speak. It's about diffusing into the rebellious potential. "

- Enno Schwall

It was only after the arrest of the OPEC bomber and data center member Hans-Joachim Klein in 1998 that the investigators learned something about their internal structures. In 1999 Rudolf Schindler was therefore arrested. From 2001 onwards, Schindler and others (including the former head of the International Office of the TU Berlin Matthias Borgmann and the Mehringhof activists Harald Glöde and Axel Haug) were charged in Berlin with founding a terrorist organization under Section 129a of the Criminal Code . In 2004 Schindler and his wife Sabine Eckle were sentenced to three years and nine months in prison; the former member Tarek Mousli appeared in the trial as a key witness and was released from custody.

The newspaper Revolutionäre Zorn was published from the environment of the RZ . After the anti-terrorism laws were also applied to the printing industry in 1978, all issues of the magazine were withdrawn for destruction after nationwide raids. Reprints of RZ declarations in the Frankfurt magazine Pflasterstrand (issue 45) or in the Berlin Info-Bug (issue 145) were also affected. The printing company's lawyers noted in the proceedings against employees that they were astonished that established magazines were allowed to reprint statements by the Red Army Faction unhindered .

history

First attacks

The data centers came from the militant autonomous spectrum. They acted as loosely organized and independently acting cells. Since 1976 they have been operating under the name Revolutionary Cells . There were contacts with the RAF, the June 2nd Movement and also with Palestinian groups and the terrorist Carlos, who had been wanted for a long time worldwide .

The RZ carried out the first attacks in November 1973 in Berlin and Nuremberg against the ITT group . In 1975 a women's group from the RZ carried out a bomb attack on the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. The Rote Zora , as the group consisting only of female members called itself shortly thereafter, subsequently appeared as an independent organization. Up until the 1980s there were joint attacks by both groups.

In addition, there was an international cell of the RZ whose members were involved in various international attacks: For example, Hans-Joachim Klein, alongside Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann (movement June 2nd) in the attack on the OPEC conference in 1975 under Carlos. The data centers were also involved in the hijacking of an Air France plane from Athens to Entebbe in 1976. For both operations, RZ members placed themselves under the command of Wadi Haddad , who commanded a split from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In the course of the Israeli military campaign to storm the Entebbe airport building, where the kidnappers were holding the hostages, two RZ founders were killed, Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann . This led to fierce disputes within the data center about the future orientation of the group; Attacks abroad were no longer carried out afterwards. Johannes Weinrich , who succeeded Böses and favored more militant attacks, joined Carlos in the course of the clashes.

Later years

Although the data centers refused to target the killing of people according to their own statements, they carried out several so-called "knee shot" attacks. The aim of these attacks was supposedly to seriously injure the victim and render him unable to work for a long time. The murder of the Hessian Minister of Economics, Heinz-Herbert Karry, in 1981 is said to go back to such an action; the exact circumstances have never been clarified. In a letter of confession, the data center presented the killing as an accident, but showed no remorse. On September 20, 1983, an explosives attack was carried out on the computer center of the MAN plant in Gustavsburg . The damage to property amounted to several million DM. Harald Hollenberg , head of the Berlin immigration office , was shot in the legs in 1986 and Günter Korbmacher, the presiding judge at the Federal Administrative Court, a year later.

In 1987, Ingrid Strobl was identified on a surveillance video . During the undercover investigation against her, Strobl met a large group of people in November 1987. As a result, on December 18, 1987, the BKA struck a great blow against the revolutionary cells. Thousands of police officers searched 33 buildings in 20 cities. Search warrants were carried out against 23 suspected data center members. Most were later convicted. Four members fled to France.

After the reunification, the data centers lost their importance and support in the scene. On January 15, 1991, a bomb attack on Berlin's Victory Column failed . In December 1991 the RZ published a text describing the clashes after the Entebbe kidnapping and reporting on the increasing division of the groups. In particular, they distance themselves from their anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist ideology of the 1970s. The selection of hostages as Israeli citizens and Jews on the one hand and other hostages on the other was described as anti-Semitic .

In October 1993, the last attacks by the Revolutionary Cells became known: A transformer house of the Federal Border Guard near Frankfurt (Oder) was destroyed and there was an attack at Rothenburg (Saxony) airport . The Rote Zora detonated a bomb in the Lürssen shipyard in Lemwerder in July 1995 .

According to the Federal Prosecutor General , the Revolutionary Cells / Rote Zora committed themselves to a total of 186 attacks, 40 of them in Berlin. They claimed to fight against "state racism , sexism and patriarchy ". In the mid-1980s, the attacks were primarily directed against the Federal Republic's policy on foreigners and asylum.

According to the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Interior, the RZ carried out a total of 296 explosives, incendiaries and other attacks in the period 1973–1995.

In 2000, the two former data center members Christian Gauger and his partner Sonja Suder were arrested in Paris and released after a few months because the offenses they were accused of were barred in France. They were accused of being involved in bomb attacks against the companies KSB (Frankenthal) and MAN 's Gustavsburg plant and Heidelberg Castle in the 1970s. Suder was also suspected of having been involved in the preparation of the attack on the 1975 OPEC conference in Vienna. Gauger and Suder had fled to France in 1978 when they realized they were being followed. After urgent applications against extradition to Germany were rejected by the European Court of Human Rights in 2010 , both were extradited to Germany in September 2011 and have been in custody ever since. Her criminal trial began on September 21, 2012 before the Frankfurt Regional Court. On November 12, 2013, Suder was acquitted of allegations of murder in connection with the attack on the OPEC oil ministers' conference in Vienna in December 1975, as complicity could not be proven. For three arson attacks in 1977 and 1978, the now 80-year-old was sentenced to three years and six months in prison. Because Suder had already spent two and a half years in custody, the judges suspended the warrant for her arrest. The proceedings against her partner Christian Gauger had already been discontinued because of permanent incapacity to stand trial.

In December 2006, the former data center members Adrienne Gerhäuser and Thomas Kram surprisingly presented themselves to the Federal Prosecutor's Office. Because of his involvement in two failed bomb attacks with the Rote Zora, Gerhäuser was sentenced to two years probation in April 2007. Kram was sentenced to two years probation in 2009 for membership in a terrorist organization.

literature

  • Wolfgang Kraushaar : In the shadow of the RAF: The history of the 'revolutionary cells'. In: The RAF and left-wing terrorism. Edited by Wolfgang Kraushaar, Hamburger Edition HIS, Hamburg 2006, Volume 1, pp. 583–603
  • ID archive at IISG / Amsterdam: The fruits of anger. Texts and materials on the history of the Revolutionary Cells and the Red Zora . Berlin and Amsterdam 1993. ISBN 3-89408-023-X - Online
  • Armin Pfahl-Traughber : Left -Wing Extremism in Germany: A Critical Assessment. Wiesbaden 2014; Springer, ISBN 978-3-658-04506-7 , pp. 170-178

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Armin Pfahl-Traughber : Left-wing extremism in Germany: A critical inventory. Wiesbaden 2014; Springer, ISBN 978-3-658-04506-7 , p. 173
  2. ^ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg Germany: Opec assassination trial: Suder and Gauger are silent. In: SPIEGEL ONLINE. Retrieved August 4, 2016 .
  3. ↑ "Democracy is the best answer to right-wing extremism" , Kay Nehm, November 29, 2000
  4. ↑ Create a hierarchy of forms of action? Interview with Enno Schwall (RZ) in 1982, documented in: ZAG - newspaper anti-racist groups, no. 36/37, 4th quarter 2000, pp. 30–32
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Bayer: Antique with explosives . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 2001, p. 52 ( online - March 19, 2001 ).
  6. ↑ http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/revolutionaere-zellen-ein-ganz-sensibler-zeug/149282.html
  7. ^ Judgment in the trial against left-wing extremist "Revolutionary Cells" 123recht.net
  8. ^ Roland Seim , Between Media Freedom and Censorship Interventions, Münster 1997, p. 243.
  9. ↑ Action against the Hessian, Jewish Minister of Economics Karry (May 81) , Revolutionäre cells, May 1981, based on: The fruits of anger. Texts and materials on the history of the Revolutionary Cells and the Red Zora. , ID archive in the IISG (ed.), ID-Verlag
  10. ↑ Johannes Wörle: Grounding through a network structure? Revolutionary cells in Germany. In: Alexander Straßner (Hg): Social revolutionary terrorism: theory, ideology, case studies, future scenarios. VS Verlag, 2008, p. 267f
  11. ↑ Attack on data center in southern Hesse reveals weaknesses in security planning: MAN bomb makes IT security people sit up and take notice. In: Computerwoche . September 30, 1983, accessed March 4, 2016 (In the article the "Revolutionary Cells" are titled as "Red Cells".).
  12. ↑ The data centers were not a chat room. In: jungle-world.com. Archived from the original on August 4, 2016 ; accessed on August 4, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Knockout for the after-work terrorists , DER SPIEGEL December 18, 2019
  14. ↑ Gerd Albartus is dead. , Revolutionary cells in December 1991, (based on: The fruits of anger. Texts and materials on the history of the revolutionary cells and the Red Zora. , ID archive in the IISG (ed.), ID-Verlag).
  15. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20131030150346/http://www.mik.nrw.de/verfassungsschutz/linksextremismus/linksterrorismus/rz-und-rote-zora.html
  16. ↑ "You always look to see if someone is behind you" in: taz.de of March 20, 2010.
  17. ↑ Suspected German terrorists are threatened with extradition in: Spiegel Online from January 3, 2011
  18. ↑ Ex-members are arrested in: taz on September 16, 2011.
  19. ↑ Frankfurt Revolutionary cells Suder Gauger. FR from September 21, 2012
  20. ^ Revolutionary cell activist Sonja Suder: The last judgment. In: taz.de from November 12, 2013, accessed on June 26, 2015
  21. ↑ German terrorists confront after 19 years , SPIEGEL Online, February 3, 2007
    Suspected terrorists confront after 19 years (tagesschau.de archive), Tagesschau.de, February 3, 2007
    The popular urban guerrilla gets out , taz, February 5 2007
  22. ↑ https://www.morgenpost.de/printarchiv/berlin/article103130848/Bewaehrung-fuer-Mitglied-der-Roten-Zora.html
  23. ↑ Supreme Court: a member of the "Red Zora" to suspended sentence of two years imprisonment (PM 29/2007). Retrieved August 3, 2016 .
  24. ↑ taz, the daily newspaper: "Do you give someone a weapon who you want to kill?" In: www.taz.de. Retrieved August 4, 2016 .